SundayReview | Opinion
Secret
Ingredient for Success
By CAMILLE SWEENEY
and JOSH GOSFIELDJAN. 19, 2013
Continue reading the main story Share This Page
Editors' note:
We're resurfacing this story from the archives to help you get 2017 off to a
successful start.
WHAT does
self-awareness have to do with a restaurant empire? A tennis championship? Or a
rock star’s dream?
David Chang’s
experience is instructive.
Mr. Chang is an
internationally renowned, award-winning Korean-American chef, restaurateur and
owner of the Momofuku restaurant group with eight restaurants from Toronto to
Sydney, and other thriving enterprises, including bakeries and bars, a PBS TV
show, guest spots on HBO’s “Treme” and a foodie magazine, Lucky Peach. He says
he worked himself to the bone to realize his dream — to own a humble noodle
bar.
He spent years
cooking in some of New York City’s best restaurants, apprenticed in different
noodle shops in Japan and then, finally, worked 18-hour days in his tiny
restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar.
Advertisement
Mr. Chang could
barely pay himself a salary. He had trouble keeping staff. And he was miserably
stressed.
Advertisement
He recalls a low
moment when he went with his staff on a night off to eat burgers at a
restaurant that was everything his wasn’t — packed, critically acclaimed and
financially successful. He could cook better than they did, he thought, so why
was his restaurant failing? “I couldn’t figure out what the hell we were doing
wrong,” he told us.
Mr. Chang could
have blamed someone else for his troubles, or worked harder (though available
evidence suggests that might not have been possible) or he could have made
minor tweaks to the menu. Instead he looked inward and subjected himself to
brutal self-assessment.
Was the humble
noodle bar of his dreams economically viable? Sure, a traditional noodle dish
had its charm but wouldn’t work as the mainstay of a restaurant if he hoped to
pay his bills.
Photo
Credit Marion Fayolle
Mr. Chang changed
course. Rather than worry about what a noodle bar should serve, he and his
cooks stalked the produce at the greenmarket for inspiration. Then they went
back to the kitchen and cooked as if it was their last meal, crowding the menu
with wild combinations of dishes they’d want to eat — tripe and sweetbreads,
headcheese and flavor-packed culinary mashups like a Korean-style burrito. What
happened next Mr. Chang still considers “kind of ridiculous” — the crowds came,
rave reviews piled up, awards followed and unimaginable opportunities presented
themselves.
Advertisement
During the 1970s,
Chris Argyris, a business theorist at Harvard Business School (and now, at 89,
a professor emeritus) began to research what happens to organizations and
people, like Mr. Chang, when they find obstacles in their paths.
Advertisement
Professor Argyris
called the most common response single loop learning — an insular mental
process in which we consider possible external or technical reasons for
obstacles.
Opinion
Today
Every weekday, get
thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board
and contributing writers from around the world.
Parte superior do formulário
Please verify
you're not a robot by clicking the box.
Invalid email
address. Please re-enter.
You must select a
newsletter to subscribe to.
Sign Up
Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's
products and services.
Parte inferior do formulário
Thank
you for subscribing.
An
error has occurred. Please try again later.
You
are already subscribed to this email.
LESS common but
vastly more effective is the cognitive approach that Professor Argyris called
double-loop learning. In this mode we — like Mr. Chang — question every aspect
of our approach, including our methodology, biases and deeply held assumptions.
This more psychologically nuanced self-examination requires that we honestly
challenge our beliefs and summon the courage to act on that information, which
may lead to fresh ways of thinking about our lives and our goals.
In interviews we
did with high achievers for a book, we expected to hear that talent,
persistence, dedication and luck played crucial roles in their success.
Surprisingly, however, self-awareness played an equally strong role.
The successful
people we spoke with — in business, entertainment, sports and the arts — all
had similar responses when faced with obstacles: they subjected themselves to
fairly merciless self-examination that prompted reinvention of their goals and
the methods by which they endeavored to achieve them.
Advertisement
The tennis
champion Martina Navratilova, for example, told us that after a galling loss to
Chris Evert in 1981, she questioned her assumption that she could get by on
talent and instinct alone. She began a long exploration of every aspect of her
game. She adopted a rigorous cross-training practice (common today but
essentially unheard of at the time), revamped her diet and her mental and
tactical game and ultimately transformed herself into the most successful
women’s tennis player of her era.
The indie rock
band OK Go described how it once operated under the business model of the
20th-century rock band. But when industry record sales collapsed and the band
members found themselves creatively hamstrung by their recording company, they
questioned their tactics. Rather than depend on their label, they made wildly
unconventional music videos, which went viral, and collaborative art projects
with companies like Google, State Farm and Range Rover, which financed future
creative endeavors. The band now releases albums on its own label.
Advertisement
No one’s idea of a
good time is to take a brutal assessment of their animating assumptions and to
acknowledge that those may have contributed to their failure. It’s easy to find
pat ways to explain why the world has not adequately rewarded our efforts. But
what we learned from conversation with high achievers is that challenging our
assumptions, objectives, at times even our goals, may sometimes push us further
than we thought possible. Ask David Chang, who never imagined that sweetbreads
and duck sausage rice cakes with kohlrabi and mint would find their way beside
his humble noodle dishes — and make him a star.
Camille Sweeney
and Josh Gosfield are the authors of the forthcoming book “The Art of Doing:
How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well.”
A version of this
op-ed appears in print on January 20, 2013, on Page SR4 of the New York edition
with the headline: Secret Ingredient For Success. Today's Paper|Subscribe
No comments:
Post a Comment